Do you ever feel like you are just going through life in a movie? Maybe a weird sitcom, or soap opera. The movie title: Death becomes her, fills my thoughts over and over. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes days on end. See, it's not the Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep movie I think about, but rather how that line feels. It feels more and more like how my real life is, it defines my inner feelings. Death. Where once I wouldn't udder the word, is now so familiar. I thought my reason, why God allowed me to be born, was to deliver my boys and set them free into the world to do amazing things. I thought I was a wonderful - yet always self proclaimed imperfect - mom. Russ was an incredible Dad, I never doubted that he would be. But I took such pride in what we accomplished. Jason so smart, so sweet and friendly. Never a bad word from him! Every goal he set out for himself, he did. He was the most incredible brother and growing up into a strong man, a nurse, a father, a husband. Evan, born with a sparkle and a wit that would have all happy and giggling. His character of being a good friend, helpful son, and into a Navy Soldier. My boys. Their mom. I looked at them and would say: a job well done! But for a few months, perhaps much longer than I realized, maybe a couple of years, apparently, I have been a fraud. A fake, a fairy tale, a yarn I've spun in my head. Because today, my world crashed....again. I don't think this time I will pull myself through. No "time heals" story hat I'ved heard from so many every fucking time someone left me, is going to help. A brother dies in a fire. A father packs his bag and walks out of my life. A man my mother is seeing molests me repeatedly along with my sister until we kick his ass. A date decides no means yes and forces himself on me, raping and taking my last shred of hope for being cared about away from me, leaving me to make the worst decision ever in my life - and alone in the process. This all under the age of 17. Time. Time helped. Mostly what helped was being rescued by a man that fell in love with me. You see, before then I did not care if I was alive or dead. I participated in games and with the 'wrong' crowd. I drank. Dabbled in drugs. It didn't matter because hell, I'll live to 22 and then die like my brother. But, no. I married, I was so happy. I was loved, cared for, protected and safe. We went on to have these precious kids and raised them in sports. In church. Cub and Boy scouts, camping. Swimming pool. Friends. Bikes. Roller blades. Video games. Real home cooked food where we sat at the dinner table, discussing our day. We laughed we loved and we lived a great life. Then darkness came with the death of sweet Alex, my sisters 19 yr old, the boys' cousin. Sadness and hurt, anger and rage. However, the strength of the family's core, pulled us together and in time we went forward with all that was love. 2011 my world changed forever with a devastating blind side, a pain that is concrete, then 5 months later my heart tore, a hole in it's center - Karla was dead. My dear sister. Her mind Still feelng the loss of her youngest boy. How does a mother ever heal from that? Her pain coupled with the mental anguish of bi-polar and alcoholism. My sister who was like my twin, just 1 year older. I knew her thoughts, I felt her pain, I carried her secrets. For these losses, this time, I was alone. Kids grown and on their own. Older and feeling like I didn't have it in me, I couldn't heal. I've never healed nor will I ever. Something to be said about being surrounded by love and support. Getting thru the next three years wasn't easy. My journal of that time reveals the dark hauntings in my writings of loneliness, bitterness and deep in my soul pain. I wanted it to be over. There wasn't a way out of the crazy and that drove me to drink more and smoke more and take giant risks and be angry......and to never ever want to trust anyone ever again because if you do, then they stab you. They leave you. They die. And each time, a little bit of wendee dies. Meeting my dear wife is an example of what could have happened. I thought I had put again the things aside that had crushed me and left me in a pile of pain and digust....It took a lot to again trust. And, because I was not healed enough, whole enough, strong enough......I thought I was, but I really wasnt......I almost reversed this curse of mine onto her, for her to experience. I had a moment, a brief moment, but I stepped back into my reality. My safe and loved and cared for zone. And here I have built a new happy life and we have love and we have wonderful jobs and brand new cars......and then crashing after crashing after crashing......today another. But I'm spent. I have nothing left in me to fight. I am now going to simply exist. I can't hardly think because my mind races to the flashes of days gone by, of two blond toe heads running through the house, basketball outside and cartoons up loud....a time of unconditional love. Of hugs and kisses. Waves of goodbye at the bus stop. Back to school nights with proud smiles on faces.....the images from babies to weddings, back to learning to ride a bike, the navy and heart surgeries, pregnancies and grandchildren....my life has been so full of extreme ups and hellish lows. And now I can't find the space to crawl out of the firey room....this one...will break me. I pray to God to take me home. I pleed to find my sister-brother-nephew-friends, those who have escaped this crazy but sometimes but always unpredictable madness of beauty and evil we call life...im too tired now. I don't have the fight. I'm giving in, giving up. What is, will be. I'll work, I'll save, I'll spend. Life is short-my motto forever. And tomorrow will come, the sun rising then setting to bring on the moon.This is it.
